Tag: Whitehawk

Well, all of the leagues have finally started. The Isthmian League caught up with the rest and started its competitive season this weekend, meaning that everyone has now started for the new season, and this evening two of our four matches come from this league. First up, though, we’re off to Surrey for Chertsey Town’s first match in Division One Central of the Southern League. Chertsey were promoted after finishing in second place in the Combined Counties League last season, after the champions, Guildford City, were unable to take up their promotion place because of ground issues. Slough Town, meanwhile, missed out in the semi-finals of the play-offs last season and will be hoping to go one better this season. Our second match is from the Division One South of the Isthmian League. Maidstone United were relegated from the Premier Division of the League last season, and their first match of the new season was at “home” – their current temporary home is at Sittingbourne – against Whitehawk, the Brighton-based club that only missed out on promotion at the end of last season after losing the play-off final in this division against Leatherhead. The third match is from Division One North of the Isthmian League, and is between Ilford and Enfield Town. Enfield, as regular readers of this site will already aware, will be moving to their...

For men of a certain age, the name of Leatherhead FC makes the eyes mist over and the memories come flooding back. The Tanners were in Division One of the Isthmian League (which was renamed the Premier Division in 1977, following reorganisation) when they beat Colchester United and Brighton & Hove Albion on the way to the Fourth Round of the FA Cup in 1975, where the BBC’s Match Of The Day cameras saw them steal a two goal lead against First Division Leicester City before losing by three goals to two. Over the next couple of years, they would beat Cambridge United and Northampton Town, as well as reaching Wembley in the 1978 FA Trophy Final, before dropping back to the relative obscurity from whence they came. Three and a half decades on, the Isthmian League is now known as the Ryman League and Leatherhead are fighting to get out of one its two basement divisions. This evening, their supporters are back on the south coast for a play-off semi-final in the Ryman League Division One South against Whitehawk. Such is the slightly rushed atmosphere under which non-league play-offs tend to be played that it’s the second time in four days that the two clubs have met – Whitehawk won 2-1 here on Saturday to secure third place in the league and, therefore, home advantage this evening –...

At the Withdean Stadium this afternoon, all the fun of the fair was on display, with two goals in the last few minutes and a win that keep Brighton & Hove Albion at the top of League One. This success is well deserved, but there is a knock-on effect of sorts going on just up the road at Whitehawk. Promoted from the Sussex County League at the end of last season, they are still being subsidised and are now in third place in the First Division South of the Ryman League, but their home attendances still struggle to get into three figures. There are just eighty people here today, and a good quarter of them have made the journey down to the south coast from Whyteleafe. If Whitehawk are to survive in the long-term at this level or above it, this is a matter that they will need to address. To whom we should attribute the first usage of that most hardy of perennial clichés, “it’s a game of two halves”, appears to have been lost to the mists of time, but were reminded of it during the second half of this match. A tedious, tepid, goalless first half had passed us by with just a single long-range shot tipped acrobatically over the crossbar to awaken us from our slumber. What, we might reasonably have asked ourselves, is the...

The latter qualifying round stages of the FA Cup have a habit of rather creeping up on us. One week, village teams are playing each other in front of a handful of men and their dogs, but before you know it there is something altogether more significant at stake. This weekend it’s the Third Qualifying Round stage, and everybody involved this weekend has something to play for. The relative giants (and it is relative – Luton Town or Darlington, say, look like goliaths on the horizon if your club struggles to bring in a three figure crowd on a regular basis) of the Blue Square Premier enter the competition in the final qualifying round, and the winners of this afternoon’s matches also pocket £7,500 – a tidy sum for a small club, and on top of that lies the opportunity to profit still further from involvement in the next round, at least. On the very perimeter of Brighton, at the foot of the Sussex Downs, lays The Enclosed Ground, the home of Whitehawk Football Club. Whitehawk were bought by a local company called Kingspan last year and have been on the up since then. They won the Sussex County Football League at the end of last season and the ground improvements required to host Ryman League football were carried out to ensure their promotion. The Enclosed Ground is now...

With the scent of Wembley just starting to become apparent, there was a long trip south this weekend for Marske United of the Northern League. Still, with the sea visible on the horizon, at least they might have felt at home at the foot of the South Downs.